Tattoo

Recently , I got a sex change on a whim. I was out drinking with some friends, got really drunk, and went in for the surgery. The doctors suggested I wait until I was sober, but I said no, give me the sex change.

Well, to make a long story short (so to speak), I woke up with breasts, a vagina, and a splitting headache. Also, I had a tattoo. I don’t remember where I got it, but there it was.

I was a woman for several weeks. The people at work were nice about it, but, to tell you the truth, I didn’t really have time to enjoy being a woman—I was swamped with projects. Finally, I decided to go back to being a man. For one thing, I hadn’t thought about how you need to change your whole wardrobe.

When I went in for the second surgery, I asked the doctor if he could also remove the tattoo while he was at it. He said, “But since you’re going to be a man again, wouldn’t you like to keep the tattoo?” I said no, man or woman, I didn’t want the tattoo.

I woke up from the operation, and I was a man again. But get this: I still had the tattoo! I thought, Am I crazy? I confronted the surgeon, and he said he thought we had left the tattoo part undecided. Now that I was a man, I felt like punching him, but I didn’t. Instead, I just made an appointment to come back and get the tattoo removed.

I should have been suspicious when I went back to the hospital and they put me under full anesthesia, because when I woke up I was a woman again but the tattoo was still there! They said it had been a mistake, and to make up for it they would do my next surgery for free.

I didn’t know what to do. I became depressed. I started getting hounded by my insurance company. They had covered my sex-change operations in full, but they said they didn’t cover tattoo removal. But I didn’t have a tattoo removal, I told them. They said they had already paid my doctor for one by mistake, and now I had to reimburse them. I called my doctor, and he said he hadn’t received any payment for tattoo removal.

I was so mad, I felt like suing someone. But who? My drinking buddies didn’t have any money, and I had no luck tracking down the tattoo parlor.

I gave up. I started hitting the bars and sleeping around. I don’t even remember if I was a man or a woman at that point. I felt a little cheap, so maybe I was a woman.

One night, after some meaningless sex, he or she turned to me and said, “You know, I really like your tattoo.” Something clicked in my head, and in my gut or maybe my uterus. I hadn’t realized it, but I also liked the tattoo. I was a tattoo person!

I called my doctor and told him the news: I wanted to get another sex-change operation, but I was going to keep the tattoo. He said I was an idiot. But I don’t care. If wanting to keep your tattoo makes you an idiot, then I’m the king of the idiots. Or the queen of the idiots—I have to look. ♦

Jack Handey has contributed to The New Yorker since 1987. He has written several humor books, including the forthcoming “Please Stop the Deep Thoughts.”